updates of the Trans-West African Coastal Highway: China sends investigation team

Professor Brautigam had written about the Trans-West African Coastal Highway in her 2012 post when ECOWAS and Ministry of Commerce of China signed agreement to cooperate in the construction of this massive infrastructure project.

It seemed that the project was moving steadily over the years. The Ministry of Commerce of China had sent an investigation team from CCCC Highway Consultants Co.Ltd (formerly the Highway Planning and Design Institute (HPDI) of the Ministry of Communications) to make an initial investigation tour in the West African countries. They started in the ECOWAS office in Nigeria on Feb 11. They just finished meeting with seven Chinese companies that had extensive road construction experience in Ghana at China's Economic and Commercial Counselor's office. This seems the typical working procedure. They will continue their trip westward.

A quick recap of the project: the massive project involves 11 countries. The proposed project starts from Lagos, Nigeria and stretch westward to connect Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, and ends in Dakar, Senegal. ECOWAS wish to partner with Chinese corporations that had extensive infrastructure delivery experiences in Africa to carry out this ambitious project. It is also known as part of the Trans-African Highway network project.

Chinese delegation at ECOWAS office, Nigeria. Source:www.hpdi.com.cn

Chinese delegation at Ghana, meeting with Chinese companies. Source: http://gh.mofcom.gov.cn

It makes you wonder when they complete this investigation trip, in what way will the highway be funded. Chinese companies might take this opportunity to make inroads in investing in the services and products when constructing the highway. Such a massive project, like many other infrastructure projects that is going on now in Africa, will of course transform the West African urbanism and urban lifestyle in years to come. 

"Write Here, Write Now": Introducing Scrivener, a Powerful yet Plain Writing Tool for Writers

What is Scrivener?

Scrivener is a Powerful yet Plain writing tool for writers. It's nothing fancy, yet quite powerful. It is developed by Keith who originally wanted to create a satisfactory word processor for his own writing goals. From a writer's perspective, he created Scrivener that is more suited to the needs of writers and scholars.

How I came to learn about Scrivener?

I first learned about Scrivener from a graduate seminar. The professor mentioned that she uses this writing software. I became interested and asked her to show me in her office hours how Scrivener works. Then I downloaded a trial version and I really liked it!

Features I love most about Scrivener

There are many cool features about Scrivener that would beat Microsoft word or other word processors. But what I love most are the Binder and Inspector features. The binder allows you to see all the documents that you are working on while you are editing one document. You can organize those texts in the binder by dragging. You can also create folders in the binder. This idea is superior over Microsoft Word, because in Word you can only edit one document in a single window and have to swap between windows representing multiple documents you are working on. The Inspector feature allows you to take notes, footnotes, snapshots of the text you are working on. Finally, the Compile feature allows you to compile all the text into one long document in rtf, doc, pdf format. 

more to come about Scrivener's cool features...

Who uses Scrivener (click to open new webpage)

A Screenshot of Scrivener

Screenshot of Scrivener on my Macbook Pro

22nd AU summit and China's role

The theme of the ongoing AU summit is "Agriculture and Food Security". However, I haven't seen anything yet discussing China's role in agricultural development in Africa.

So far, China has extended help with food security in Africa through its aid programs, which includes setting up agricultural technology demonstration centers, sending agricultural experts, and directing providing food stuff. For an historical overview of China's agricultural aid in Africa, please read Dr.Brautigam's books and papers.

I am currently following developments of several agricultural aid/investment projects in Angola, Mozambique, among others.

On another note, but related, AU commission deputy chairman called for cooperation among African nations to promote investment in infrastructure development. This will have tremendous implications for future economic growth across all sectors. The program for infrastructure development in Africa (PIDA) calls for a total of $68 billion investment. We will see how much will be financed by Chinese aid and contribute to Chinese infrastructure contractors, who are already a major force in this sector in Africa.

Chinese Illegal Gold Miners in Ghana

I am grateful to Prof. Brautigam who agreed to publish this on her blog "China in Africa: The Real Story" as a guest post. 

Chinese Illegal Gold Miners in Ghana

Yang Jiao

On May 14th, Ghana's Ministerial Task force led by the President Mahama launched a crackdown on illegal gold mining. It targets any foreigners who operate in small-scale gold mining (or Galamsey as Ghanaians call it). By June 6, 169 Chinese miners were detained and sent to Accra. 124 of them were detained at Ghana Immigration Services and another 45 Chinese miners detained at the prison of Bureau of National Investigations. On Jun 10, all 169 were released and ready to return to China.

This is not the first time Chinese illegal miners were detained in Ghana, but certainly the most intense since Ghana’s last election. Large influx of Chinese miners in mineral-rich African countries is rare. But the incident in Ghana points to vulnerabilities in the governance of resources and state control of transnational capital and migration as China and many African countries embrace neoliberal economic policies.

Why have 12,000 Chinese miners come from Guangxi province? 

Alluvial gold mining has a long history in Ghana. The first wave of Chinese miners came for Ghana’s gold during 1990s when there were very few Chinese in the country. Large numbers of Chinese gold miners arrived around 2010 when gold prices were soaring. The majority of them are from impoverished Shanglin county of Guangxi province. Others are from Hunan, Henan, Heilongjiang, and Fujian provinces.

Shanglin has been a top place of gold production in the gold-rich Guangxi province historically. Thousands of Shanglin miners have extensive gold mining experiences both in China and abroad. Shanglin officials estimate that 12,000 gold miners have been to Ghana. Many Chinese businessmen in Ghana believe there are approximately 20,000 gold miners in Ghana. They are predominantly doing alluvial gold mining because of their experience with this type of small-scale mining and lack of financial capital


How does illegal gold mining work?


According to the Ghana Minerals and Mining Act 2006, foreigners were prohibited from small-scale gold mining on plots under 25 acres. Guangxi miners usually pool capital together from family savings and bank loans or even usury in China to form a small company with an initial capital input of about US$500,000. This contrasts with capital-intensive Western mining companies in Ghana (see Table 1).

The arrival of Chinese alluvial miners changed the situation where traditional Ghanaian galamsey rely on inefficient human labor to wash gold sands. Chinese sand pumps helped increase the efficiency of alluvial gold production.

Chinese gold mining company would partner with a Ghanaian who holds small-scale mining license and use his company as a front. Chinese miners are both the investor and labor provider. Usually 10% of profits would go to their Ghanaian partner, and some share goes to the local land owner/chief (see Table 2).

Guangxi miners import machinery from China and recruit workers from Shanglin or other parts of Guangxi. Many workers have kinship ties or are from the same village in Shanglin county. Rags to riches stories of fellow miners motivate more young men to go to Ghana. Workers usually sign contracts for 2 or 3 years with their bosses.

During their stay in Ghana, they are mostly at mining sites with nearly no mobility. Due to harsh working conditions and limited access to medical facilities, many died of malaria each year.

How do Chinese workers get in and out of Ghana?

Since 2010, it is extremely hard for a Guangxi worker to get a Ghana visa in Beijing. Even with the help of visa brokers in China, getting a visa is quite expensive and time consuming. However, visa brokers in Ghana are able to get on-arrival visas for incoming workers from Ghana Immigration Services by bribing some Ghanaian officials. Some workers would obtain Liberian visas and flight tickets. When they land in Accra, brokers pick them up inside the airport. Some brokers direct them to arrive in Togo first then bring them across border with their on-arrival visas.

The visa brokers work closely with gold mining bosses and some corrupt Ghanaian Immigration officers to traffic Guangxi workers into the country. At its peak, more than two dozen Chinese mining workers are sitting on each arriving flight in Accra. When they arrive, they would be taken to the mining sites directly. Their passports are usually kept in the hands of brokers for visa extensions.

All workers were on tourist visas and none of them have work permits legally obtained from Ghana Immigration Services. According to one Chinese visa broker who used to work for Guangxi gold miners, he partners with certain Immigration officers to extend visas for the workers. The official cost for a one month extension is 40 cedis, and the broker charges 150 cedis per person. The Immigration officer gets a lump sum of 100 or more cedis per request. For Guangxi workers, single re-entry visa cost about US$200, and multiple re-entry visa within 3 months cost about US$300.

Many Guangxi miners only have their visas renewed when they are leaving Ghana. Visa brokers would bribe certain Immigration officers in the Accra airport and negotiate a fixed fine for each worker. These immigration officers usually get an extra few hundred cedis in their pockets. These brokers also reserve hotels and buy flight tickets for Chinese workers.

All of these cannot be done without coordinated assistance from the Chinese visa brokers and corrupt Ghana immigration officers.


What about environment degradation and violence at the mining site?

In the late 1990’s, one Chinese entrepreneur comments, Chinese gold miners would rehabilitate the land. As more gold miners come, they start to pay and delegate the work to local chiefs, who often did not implement the rehabilitation. Digging without proper restoring has resulted in corrosion in the mining regions.

After getting rich quickly, some Guangxi miners show off their wealth by purchasing brand new trucks and extravagant SUVs. Exposure of their wealth and vulnerability as foreigners make them easy targets for criminals. After several armed robberies in the mining regions, every Guangxi mining site purchased rifles and pistols for protection. Since Guangxi workers are mostly illiterate and speak no English, there are huge language and cultural gaps between them and their Ghanaian counterparts. In a tragic incident, one Guangxi miner shot his Ghanaian excavator driver due to miscommunication. Last year, a 16-year-old Guangxi miner was shot dead during a Ghanaian crackdown operation.

At the moment, hundreds of Guangxi miners are still hiding on the mountains according to Mr.Z, a miner from Heilongjiang Province based in Dunkwa. Impacts of illegal mining on the environment and frequent violence at the mining sites have already brought local resentment towards these Chinese miners.

Will illegal mining continue?

It depends on how effective the Ghanaian government is in enforcing its mining laws, immigration laws and how effective it tackles the corruption problem. It also depends on how effectively the Chinese government curbs this kind of migrant work. However, it is a tough job for any government to monitor and control speculating capital and illegal immigration. The recent crackdown on illegal gold mining offers an opportunity for both China and mineral-rich African countries to learn to tackle this issue together.

The two countries enjoy a rather close relationship since Ghana’s independence. In 2012, bilateral trade between China and Ghana is US$5.4bn, increasing 56.5% over 2011. Ghana also signed a US$3bn loan facility with China Development Bank (CDB) to finance nine infrastructure projects. Chinese investment will continue to be an important factor in Ghana’s future growth.

Do We See Chinese Mining Migrants in Other Parts of Africa

I have not heard of large influx of Chinese miners in other African countries. The large number of illegal miners in Ghana should not eclipse the big picture that the majority of Chinese companies and entrepreneurs are investing legally in many sectors such as agriculture, construction, energy, fishing, manufacturing, telecommunications, and wholesale trade. The Chinese migrant population in Ghana is highly diverse in its demographic characteristics, business types and wealth level. The majority live in Accra and Tema and work for state-owned enterprises.

Reference:
Interviews with Chinese gold miners during my fieldwork in Ghana from 2010 to 2012.

Hello Blogger!

This is my first blog post. Here I share my learning experience in Ghana during my stay in this beautiful country. Any suggestions are welcome!